This weekend I was very lucky. I got to spend significant time with two of my grandchildren, Lila and Rebecca. Watching them both got me to thinking. What is natural to a child? Is there anything so pure as a child before life introduces the real world. What I see and admire in all my grandchildren is the tendency to friendliness, fascination and admiration with the beautiful, and a willingness to smile in answer to anyone’s love, and to believe and trust without questioning. A child is a natural believer, a natural friend, responding and yielding, and most of all knowing and conveying love not hate. A child shows us adults what is our natural state.
After we come into the world what is added is not natural it is foreign. It may seem useful at the moment, but it is still foreign. A person may ultimately be clever, witty, or learned, all attributes, but they are still not natural to the human condition. I am not saying that a child should never learn anything that is worldly. No that is not realistic. No, we are all pure spirits who come to earth and then are subjected to all the world gives away in the way of knowledge, experience, joys and sorrows, illumination and disillusionments. Our goal is to push through all these contradictory experiences and still become more full of love and kindness, rising above all that pulls us down and keeps us here on earth. It is a fight through life that is worth fighting for you, because you see we are fighting to become as we entered the world pure, fascinated, curious, and full of admiration and love.
This is the example Jesus set for us when he came to live among us, and the lesson he was teaching us when he said to be like children. Good luck to us all as we take flight to find our inner child that was there when each of us started. When you were a newborn child you were in your — natural state.
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